


Hunting Season

by NervousAsexual



Series: Whumptober 2020 [28]
Category: Thief (Video Game Original Series)
Genre: Fugitives, Garrett would never admit it but he likes having Artemus' attention, Knife Wounds, Mostly Hurt/Not Much Comfort, Spoilers, enforcers - Freeform, hunting season, specifically for the immediate aftermath of 'Killing Time'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:06:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27250156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: Low on allies and barely standing, Garrett runs from the enforcers.
Relationships: Artemus & Garrett (Thief Video Games)
Series: Whumptober 2020 [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960987
Kudos: 13
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Hunting Season

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober prompt #28--hunting season

He should have expected it but he didn't. When he dragged himself back to his apartment and the guard was still on his patrol he let himself get fooled into thinking he was safe. He stopped in the entryway of the building to clean himself up a bit, hide the bloodstains on his cloak, then strolled right up the stairs toward his apartment.

"I got my eye on you," the guard told him. Garrett, trying to hide how hard he was breathing and how much he was shaking, just gave him a grin. He went to his apartment, fumbled with the key, and let himself in.

The enforcer would have killed him immediately if the first thing he saw hadn't been the body of the keeper in front of the fireplace, half hidden under the table. But he saw it and before fully realizing what it was he ducked into the corner and pinched out the nearby candle. That was when he heard the whispering that told him he wasn't alone.

The enforcer, invisible but for the faintest of outlines shimmering in the air, rounded the corner from the back room just as he hid himself. It... they... stepped over the keeper's body like it wasn't one of their own kind lying there at all but just another of the poor idiots with the misfortune to be out on the street tonight. It came to the door, close enough that Garrett could have reached out and touched it, and he could smell the magic burning on it. He flattened himself against the wall and held his breath and tried to still the shaking. The enforcer stopped there between him and the door.

His heart skipped a beat. Nothing he had on him was enough to take an enforcer down. He'd only gotten this far by accident, it seemed like, accident and stealth. His arm ached to grab his dagger and at least have something to deflect the throwing blades he was sure would be at his throat in moments.

The enforcer stood very still, listening, and then began to retrace its steps.

Right there he had another narrow escape. The relief that shot through him was so great that he slumped to the floor, exhausted, and probably would have passed out if his eyes hadn't fallen again on the dead keeper.

He'd wondered, when the enforcers first grabbed him. If he'd realized they were there for him he would have been able to avoid them but he'd had no idea; for all he knew he was still working with the keepers. At first he'd thought he was being punished for what happened to the clock tower and had looked around for Artemus. If nothing else the old keeper could be relied on to explain things, even if it was in his typical cryptic way, but Artemus had been nowhere to be seen. When they shoved him into the ring of runes and his entire body seized up his first thought had been fear, not from what the enforcers were doing but from a second seizure coming so close on the heels of the one that night in Terces Courtyard. His second thought was of Artemus.

Stupid. It was stupid. He'd survived seizures alone in far worse places. But there had been some bitter comfort in the way Artemus had taken charge, walked him to relative safety, and made sure he was comfortable. Some stupid part of him wanted that comfort again.

But it wasn't a seizure, he'd realized as he collapsed into the chair inside the ring. It was the glyphs. They were meant to keep him from slipping away unnoticed. That was when he began to wonder where Artemus was, and why he wasn't at least standing there looking at him with those disappointed eyes.

Now, in the dark of his apartment, Garrett inched closer to the body on the floor. The keeper robes were unmistakable. His eyes adjusted to the low light from the hall and he turned the keeper's face toward him...

He had no idea who it was.

That realization almost dragged him under too, just as the enforcer returned. He bit the inside of his cheek hard to keep himself conscious as the whispering grew louder and tried to place the keeper's face. He really had no idea. But it definitely wasn't Artemus.

Whoever it was had come here for a reason, he tried to tell himself. A reason the enforcers clearly didn't approve of.

When the enforcer paced back in the direction it had come he felt at the keeper's pockets. Nothing. No note. No nothing.

He'd have to search the apartment for clues. And he'd have to do it while an enforcer was patrolling the place.

Great.

The whispering got louder and softer depending on where in the rooms the enforcer was. That was something he could work with. When it was softest he stuck his head out from under the table and took a quick survey. Nothing was out of order. Apart from the body on the floor and the ghostly enforcer stalking around it all looked exactly as it had when he left for the clocktower. He slipped around the body and into the corner beside the fireplace, peered into the room where he kept the bed. There was a candle burning on the crate beside the bed. That was new.

The enforcer passed him. He slipped between the bed and the wall and pinched out the candle. Nothing on the crate or below the bed. He stood quickly to get a look at the dresser. Nothing.

Whispering grew louder and he ducked back against the wall. The enforcer crossed into the bedroom and stopped at the foot of the bed.

Taff.

"He will use shadows," the enforcer said. Just hearing it made his head ache.

They came closer in the darkness and he pulled himself back, tried to make himself as small as possible. He should have slid under the bed while there was still room between them. The enforcer was so close he could feel the hum of the glyphs on its blades.

That would be the way things played out, he thought bitterly. Survived the trickster, and the mechanists, only to be killed by the people who called themselves his allies. As the enforcer took another step he closed his eyes tightly, as if that would keep it from seeing him, as if he were a child.

The enforcer stood a hair's breadth from him, examining the candle.

"I do not sense him," it said at last, and resumed stalking.

He did not waste this opportunity. He slipped beneath the bed, and as soon as the enforcer was in the other room he ducked into the back store room.

Nothing, nothing, nothing... no, there on the table a note. He was sure it hadn't been there before. He grabbed it and without even looking at it tried to slide back under the bed, just as the enforcer entered the room.

It was silent at the moment, so he didn't realize it had spotted him until a blade buried itself in the mattress an inch above his head. For a moment he couldn't decide--if it was testing him, if it didn't really know he was there but was ensuring that if he was he'd be flushed out, or if it did know he was there and he should just run like hell. At the end of that moment, he heard whispers approaching in the distance.

He opted to run.

He slid himself out from under the bed and scrambled to get into at least a crouching position, slamming into the doorframe as he went, and finally skittering out of his room, down the stairs, slamming into one wall, then the other. There wasn't time to look at the note. Whatever his 'friends' wanted him to know they should have told him at Ramien's.

The whispering was so unbelievably loud that it was no surprise to open the door to the building and find the courtyard around the South Quarter fountain practically shimmering with enforcer movement. Fine. That narrowed his options so that he didn't have to decide what to do. He veered right, up the street toward Stonemarket, hoping against hope that they would hold their fire with innocent people in the way.

But they came, and they kept coming. He ran until he couldn't breathe anymore and still kept running. The whispering followed, not gaining, but he could hear the screams. It was hard to differentiate. Some of them were probably guards. Some were almost certainly civilians.

The keepers really did hate him.

He tried to think of a safe place--Fort Ironwood, maybe. He'd killed enough rust mites that they let him enter Hammer places now. It wouldn't be permanent, but it would be a place to stop and catch his breath and read whatever is in that letter.

He was just out of the gate between Stonemarket and the Old Quarter as the first knife hit him.

It was just a scratch, a narrow miss, sliced open his armor and then the skin beneath like a paper cut, but it made him stumble. The second one stuck deep in his right shoulder blade. The third found his thigh.

He kept running. He ran without enough air to breathe, he could run like this. But the wounds ached, and the two knives still in him seemed to pulsate. The glyphs on the knives were meant to slow him enough for them to finish him off. There was no outrunning them now, and he knew he was bleeding enough that there was no hiding from them. Fort Ironwood was his only chance. He stumbled into the street where it stood and hoped it would help.

It did. One of the Hammer guards looked at him curiously and he staggered the last few feet. The guard took in the blood and pulled him forward, up onto the steps, and took a closer look at the knives. He couldn't speak, but he didn't need to. The second Hammer guard cried out and fell, a knife in his throat.

The first guard called for assistance and shoved him inside the chapel. His legs were numb, he could barely walk, but when the first wave of Hammers had passed him by he struggled forward. Somewhere to hide. The... the cemetery, maybe. He knew they had a problem with undead, and those he could hide from. He put every ounce of strength he had into making it to the hall at the back of the chapel.

The wound in his shoulder stiffened. The glyphs, he thought, almost incoherently. The one in his leg would do the same. He stumbled into the cemetery and collapsed off the raised porch.

He struck the ground so hard that it knocked the breath out of him. The wound in his leg stiffened. It was over. If he wanted to get any further he'd have to drag himself.

And then he felt hands, on his arms, his shoulders, dragging him forward. He managed to raise his head and saw not enforcer masks but keeper robes.

"Taking a break from trying to kill me?" he asked. It was all he had the strength for.

"Not all keepers believe you are guilty," one of them said. "But neither did we have evidence to change the outcome of your trial."

"That trial was a disgrace," said another. "Orland is not fit."

They pulled him into a stone garden and a third began to draw glyphs onto his back. The pain in his shoulder intensified--he tried not to cry out but couldn't hold back the sharp intake of breath--and then slackened. One of the knives clattered to the ground.

There wasn't enough left in him to raise his head and look, but none of the voices were familiar.

"Keeper Artemus has not been seen since before the trial," one of the keepers told him. "He confided in me that he no longer knew who to trust."

They pulled the knife from his leg as well. He was sure now: Orland was the brethren and betrayer. If Artemus was missing, there was a strong chance that Orland had something to do with it.

It was entirely possible that the enforcers had been sent after him, too.

_You have more important things to worry about,_ he told himself. _Like whether or not you get killed._

People were going to die. The Hammers would be lucky if the enforcers didn't wipe Fort Ironwood entirely off the map. If he didn't figure out what was going on fast, he didn't have much of a life expectancy either.

Even so, as the weight of his wounds finally dragged him under, he tried to raise his head to search the faces before him.


End file.
